


Strong on my own

by shisabella



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-10-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:07:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27027832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shisabella/pseuds/shisabella
Summary: After an extremely rough first day back at the gym in Cerulean City, Misty receives a phone call.
Relationships: Kasumi | Misty/Satoshi | Ash Ketchum
Kudos: 16





	Strong on my own

**Author's Note:**

> I'm moving my old works from fanfiction.net and tumblr to this account. This story was originally written in 2017.
> 
> Written for a prompt game on tumblr. This was the only one I actually manged to write, for the prompt "I had a nightmare about you and I just wanted to make sure you’re okay".

There’s no denying that her first day back at the gym is rough.

Rough enough that there are moments—and so very many of them—when she really thinks she won’t make it: when one of her worst fears is right in front of her, ten feet tall and with jaws larger than her whole body, and she has to face it alone. When she feels the taste of chlorine sliding down her throat. When she wakes up gasping on her couch, and in the few seconds before the dream she was maybe-having fades away she feels that sense of alone-ness and despair press down on her more than ever.

She’s still reeling from it all as she stands outside the gym watching Nurse Joy walk away, exhausted to her core, still feeling the dull pain from being slammed against Gyarados’ cage and taking the brunt of the Tentacruel’s attacks. But a feeling of lightness swells from her center despite it all, bubbles up through her, reaches her lips to pull them in a smile: she did it. She saved the gym, she defeated those three buffoons and earned Gyarados’ trust, she battled her fears and she did it all by herself. Her strength alone was enough. So she sends a thought to her friends with pride rather than in helplessness, and the only glimmer of sadness is for the fact that they couldn’t be there to see her do all that.

When later she flips the light switch in her bedroom she finds that it feels almost foreign now, after for so long her home was two people rather than a physical place. Not that it matters much right now—she barely takes the time to undo her ponytail and slip into the first old pajama shirt she finds before crawling into bed with the plan to sleep for at least twelve hours straight.

She’s not too amused when she’s awakened by an insistent shrill sound her brain eventually recognizes as the phone ringing and as she pushes the blanket away from her face to squint at the room she gages that it’s not even fully day yet. She sticks her head under her pillow with a groan, hastily concluding that whatever it is can probably wait a couple more hours.

The phone doesn’t stop ringing, though, and after a minute or so Togepi starts nudging her just in case she hasn’t heard it yet, and so she resigns to defeat and shoves pillow and blanket aside with a loud sigh. She stifles a yawn against her palm as she stumbles to the hallway, muttering a curse under her breath and deciding that if it’s her sisters a murder is probably going to occur soon.

But it’s not one of her sisters’ faces that appears on the screen when she picks the phone up. It’s Ash’s, all cramped up in a frown that eases some the moment he sees her. For a second or two they just stare at each other through the slight flickering static, until another yawn catches her unprepared.

“…Ash? It's—” She glances at the clock in the screen’s corner. “—not even 6 a.m. yet.”

“Oh. Yeah.” His hand runs to the back of his head. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

She stares at him again. “Are you okay?”

“Yep.”

“…Why are you calling?”

Pause. “Oh, it’s nothing, just—”

“You’re calling me at _six in the morning_ for nothing?”

Maybe her murderous instincts aren’t entirely quenched after all. On the screen Ash purses his lips; chews on them a moment while avoiding her glance. Finally spits them out in a sigh and admits, still not looking up, “It’s just—I had a nightmare about you and I just wanted to make sure you’re okay, is all.”

Oh—that actually leaves her stumped for a little bit. “…I’m okay,” she says then. And: “What nightmare?”

“I dunno.” His fingers rub through the mess of his dark hair. “That something happened to you back there. Can’t remember.”

Something inside Misty goes soft. Briefly she thinks of telling him about how close that came to coming true; about how if something had gone just slightly differently—if Horsea hadn’t been there to push her to she surface, if Gyarados’ feelings hadn’t changed just then—the phone might have kept ringing and ringing in an empty gym with no one to answer. But she decides against it. She’s okay now. She faced all that and came out still whole, still on her legs, and better yet: she discovered she could. No need to dwell on how close she came to not making it.

And besides, she’d rather see his face in person when she’ll show off her new Gyarados.

So: “Everything alright here. Promise,” she tells him. Then smirks: “But it was really _cute_ of you to worry like that.”

He glares cross at her, but finds nothing to retort. Well, he _did_ get out of bed to call her at not-quite-six in the morning because he got worried after having a nightmare—not the most defensible position. She ducks her head for a chuckle and then they exchange some more teasing and small talk, and she does her best not to show how nice knowing he worried about something that silly really felt through almost all of it but then does thank him before hanging up, and the last thing they give to each other before their screens go dark is a smile. Warm.

She runs her hand through her hair and turns, stretching, while the sun begins to draw pale rectangles on the hallway floor. That same feeling of lightness fills her up again, soft, even with her still-sore bones and lingering remains of brain fog from her abruptly interrupted sleep.

It’s okay. She’s okay. And that he and Brock weren’t there to see what she could do, she realizes at last, is okay too— _she_ was. She’ll show them too someday. Because they’ll meet again, right? He promised. And before that happens she’ll have time to come even farther than she already has, to train her Gyarados and her other pokémon grow stronger still. Stronger than she believed— _really_ believed—she could ever be.

She’ll carry a bit of them in her thoughts until then, while she does all of that. She’s sure they’ll

_(he’ll)_

do the same.


End file.
